Fights Over the Health Law Aren’t Over

Democrats’ health-care law may have turned a major corner Monday, with an unexpected number of Americans signing up for coverage before the deadline. But the president’s signature domestic achievement is far from a non-issue in the November elections.

White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters Monday that he would have been laughed out of the briefing room last October if he’d stood at the podium and predicted more than six million people would sign up for health insurance under the president’s new law. He was probably right.

The rollout of the government website for signing up for insurance was a disaster. The president was embarrassed and angry over what many in the West Wing lamented as a self-inflicted wound. Republicans were lobbing attacks that even the White House conceded were legit.

But now that the website has seemingly delivered close to – if not more than – the seven million enrollees needed by the deadline, the White House can breathe a little easier.

Not for long, however.

The glitches in the website in the final hours before the deadline for signing up drew plenty of criticism. Senate Republicans issued a statement Monday under the headline “Deadline Day Disaster” that went on to highlight the glitches and higher premiums.

Now critics of the law will turn their focus on the penalties for those who didn’t sign up and any trouble with coverage or even the most modest increase in premiums.

In that sense it’s a front the White House – and any Democrat up for election this November – will have to keep fighting.

Mr. Carney called the number of enrollees “a remarkable statement given where we started back in October.” Indeed, he said: “If I had stood up before you in November and told you that we would be above 6 million on March 31st, you would have laughed me out of the room and probably had reason to do so.” He conceded: “We were in a bad place in October and November.”

The problem for Democrats – and a president whose poll numbers are a drag on members of his own party in the November election – is that battles with Republicans over the health-care law will continue heading into the midterm elections.

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